The Chemist

“A benign tumor. Which he took out right there in the office with a local anesthetic and immediately assured you was nothing. He didn’t even charge you. Don’t make it into a bigger thing than it was.”

“Are you serious? How could you —” Daniel was shouting at full volume now. “How do you justify these things to yourself? All these years you’ve been manipulating me! Treating me like some laboratory animal who exists for your own amusement!”

“Hardly, Danny. I’ve been putting myself out trying to keep you safe. The Agency wanted me to play dead from the very start, but I couldn’t do that to you, not after Mom and Dad. So I made a lot of promises and spent all my free weekends flying to Milwaukee to be a criminal.”

Daniel’s voice was calmer when he answered. “I drove. And was all that really necessary?”

“Ask the poison girl. These kinds of jobs aren’t for family people.”

Daniel looked at her. “Is that true?”

“Yes. They like to recruit orphans – preferably only children. Like your brother told you before, relationships give the bad guys leverage.”

His tone mellowed further. “Are you an orphan?”

“I’m not sure. Never met my father. He could still be alive somewhere.”

“But your mother…”

“Uterine cancer. I was nineteen.”

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded.

There was a brief, very pleasurable moment of silence. Alex held her breath and prayed for it to last.

“When I did finally let you think I was dead…” Kevin began.

Alex turned the radio on and started searching through stations. Kevin did not get the hint. Daniel just stared through the windshield.

“… I was just starting with Enrique de la Fuentes. I could tell in the first few days that it was going to get out of hand. I knew what he’d done to the families of his enemies. It was time to set you free.”

“Free yourself from the visitation charade, you mean,” Daniel muttered.

Alex found a classical station and turned it up so she could hear it over Kevin’s voice.

“That’s when I put the tracker in. I needed to know you were okay. No one was watching you anymore, just me.”

Daniel grunted in disbelief.

The music’s volume was making Alex’s head hurt more. She turned it down again.

“It ended… badly with the Agency. The plan was to wait until things died down and I was forgotten, then get the face fixed. Eventually, I was coming back for you, kid. You wouldn’t have recognized me at first, but I wasn’t going to leave you thinking you were alone your whole life.”

Daniel stared straight ahead. She wondered if he believed what his brother was saying. He was staggering under the weight of so many different kinds of betrayal.

“What happened with the Agency?” Alex asked. She really didn’t want to get involved with this conversation, but it didn’t look like Daniel was going to pursue it. Before joining this unlikely alliance, it hadn’t mattered much to her one way or the other how Kevin had left the CIA. Now this information was important. It affected her, too.

“When the job with the virus was done, and de la Fuentes was out of the picture, the Agency wanted to pull me back in, but there were still some loose ends that bugged me. I wanted to nail it all down. It wouldn’t have taken too much longer and I was in a very unique position of power with the cartel. It was also a good opportunity to influence what happened there – who took over, what their agenda might be – while also getting solid information on the new structure. I couldn’t believe the Agency was calling me in. I refused to leave. I thought I had explained myself clearly, but… I guess they didn’t believe me. They must have thought I’d gone rogue, that I’d flipped and was choosing the cartel. It still makes no sense to me.” He shook his head. “I thought they knew me better.”

“What did they do?” Daniel asked.

“They burned me. Ratted me out as an agent, told people I’d killed de la Fuentes. And those people came for revenge.”

“And got that revenge, as far as the CIA knew,” she guessed.

“Exactly.”

“Did you kill him?” Daniel asked. “De la Fuentes?”

“Part of the job.”

“Have you killed a lot of people?”

“Do you really want to know?”

Daniel waited silently, not looking back.

“Okay. Fine. I’ve killed around, oh, forty-five people, maybe more. I can’t be sure about the number – you don’t always have time to check for a pulse. Do you understand why I had to keep you separated from my life?”

Daniel looked at Alex now. “Have you ever killed anyone?”

“Three times.”

“Three… oh! The people your company sent after you?”

“Yes.”

“Don’t act like that makes her better than me,” Kevin interjected, angry.

“I wasn’t —” Daniel started to say.

It was Kevin’s turn to shout. “Ask her how many people she tortured before you. Ask her how long for each of them. How many hours – how many days? I just shoot people. Clean and fast. I would never do what she does. To anyone, especially not an innocent civilian like —”

“Shut up,” Daniel snapped. “Just stop talking. Don’t make this about her. Whatever pain she caused me, remember, you caused me more. It hurt more, and it lasted for much, much longer. You say you had a good reason. So did she. She didn’t know she’d been lied to, that she’d been manipulated. I know how that feels.”